


Reverse Heist

by exclamation



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), avengers endgame - Fandom
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Bad Guy Character Death, F/M, Fixing the Ending, Infinity Stones, M/M, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-15 14:58:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18671995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exclamation/pseuds/exclamation
Summary: Steve has to put the infinity stones back where they came from, but there are a few other things he wants to do along the way.





	Reverse Heist

**Author's Note:**

> I will get back to my other fics, but first I need to get my Endgame frustrations out of my system. 
> 
> This will probably not make much sense unless you've seen Endgame. This fic is aimed at fixing one of the big things that annoyed me about Endgame and addresses a few headcanons/fixes for things that annoyed me in some of the other Marvel movies too. 
> 
> I'm putting this down as three chapters. I guess we'll find out when I get there if that stays accurate.

The first stone was the easiest. Steve started with the power stone, with Bucky's words still echoing in his ears, "I'll miss you." Did that mean he would miss him in the few seconds of subjective time he was gone? Or did he still doubt that Steve intended to go back? 

He would go back, he was determined about that, because there was no way he was leaving Bucky alone after all he'd been through. Sure, Bucky had friends in the future, like Sam and Shuri, but it wasn't the same. After all they'd been through, Steve wasn't going to abandon him, but there were others he couldn't abandon either, and a duty to be done. 

So he arrived in the ruins and followed the coordinates Rhodey had given him to the place where the stone had come from. Sure enough, he found the pedestal and he opened up his case. He picked up the stone, grateful for the protection of his suit, before setting it down exactly where it had come from, just minus the sphere that had been serving to protect any that tried to touch it. 

He was just closing the case when he heard movement behind him. 

"That's mine," a voice said. There was a man there, mask covering his face and a gun aimed at Steve. He hadn't met Quill for long in the future, but Rocket had introduced them so he knew exactly who he was looking at. 

Steve raised his hands, one of them still holding the case, and said, "You can have it. I'm just tidying up some loose ends. Just don't touch it with your bare skin." 

He backed out of the room before Quill got it into his head to shoot him. Once out of sight, he broke into a run and left the building for a flat patch of ground on which he could expand his space ship. It wasn't the one they'd used before, since the Guardians had wanted that one back, but one Carol had said she'd borrowed from friends. She'd given him a crash course in handling the controls and then told him he wasn't allowed to crash this one. Steve fired up the engines and headed off to return the soul stone. 

The place he was heading to had clearly been designed more around symbolism than practicality. There was nowhere suitable at the top of the mountain for him to land the ship, so he flew in as close as he dared before looking for the path to the top, with its hundreds of steep stairs. Clearly no one who used mobility aids was expected to make the trek for the soul stone. Before the serum, a climb like this would have sent him into an asthma attack and probably aggravated his heart enough to nearly kill him. A part of Steve was tempted to leave the soul stone down here just for the spite of it, but he had to do this properly, and that meant taking a deep breath and starting up the stairs. 

He had barely made it a quarter of the way up when a figure materialised out of the mist. Clint had told him about the red floating guy, but Steve hadn't pieced together exactly who it would be. 

"You," he said, staring at the Red Skull. 

Red Skull looked just as surprised to see him. "How is it that you are here?" 

"You're asking me that? How did you get here?" The obvious answer was the tesseract. It must have sent him somewhere in space when he'd picked it up, but that didn't explain why he would play this role here. 

"I was assigned to be guardian to the soul stone as recompense for my hubris of trying to control one of the infinity stones." 

"You didn't do much of a job of guarding it. You gave it to Thanos in my timeline." 

"I will give it only to one who is willing to make a great sacrifice. Only one who is willing to surrender that which they love is worthy of claiming the stone." 

"Anyone who is willing to shove someone off a cliff doesn't really love them. That's not a sacrifice, it's just murder, and someone who would be willing to do that is the last person who should wield the powers of the infinity stones." 

"If the soul stone came to him in your timeline, then the sacrifice was worthy." 

"By who's judgement? Yours?" Steve was willing to believe that Red Skull was incapable of truly understanding what love was more than he was willing to believe that some all-powerful universal force had made the decision to give Thanos the stone for his daughter's death. If everything was decided by some mystic force, there was no need for Red Skull to be here at all except to deliver a message that could just as easily have been written on the stones up the mountain path in a thousand different languages. But if the guardian was here to actually make the judgement of who was worthy, then Steve could think of a million people who would be better at the job than the Red Skull. 

He felt a surge of fury towards Red Skull for this entire situation, for letting Thanos have the time stone and for forcing Clint and Nat into their sacrifice. If someone just had to prove willing to sacrifice themselves to demonstrate that they were worthy, then the jump could have been a trick, or the soul stone could have materialised when Nat was about to jump off the cliff. It didn't have to result in someone's actual death, and the idea that Thanos murdering his adopted daughter was on a level with Nat giving up her life was bullshit of the highest order. 

"I play the role destiny has provided to me," Red Skull said. "As one who has touched the heart of greatness and felt true power in my veins, I alone can -" 

Steve threw Thor's hammer at his head before he could finish. 

\---

The third stone was made a touch more challenging because Steve had never been to Asgard and the palace would be in uproar because of Rocket apparently attacking Jane. Thor had also warned him that he would be arriving about the same time as an important fight. He didn't want to get caught up in any of that, so he planned out his approach before making the time jump. 

He shrunk the ship and put it in one of the compartments on his belt and then took out the pouch Thor had given him. It contained a letter Thor had written to his younger self. When asked, all Thor had said was that the letter contained warnings and advice. He clearly hadn't wanted to talk about it, so Steve had respected his privacy and not pried any further. He placed the ether in its containment device into the pouch alongside the letter, and then used the pouch's drawstring to tie it to the handle of Mjolnir. 

When Thor called for his hammer, the stone and the letter would be delivered straight to his hand. 

Steve also made sure to thoroughly clean Red Skull's blood and brain matter off the hammer because it wouldn't be polite to give it back messy after it had been borrowed without permission. 

Once he was sure everything was ready, he entered in the coordinates for the time jump and activated his GPS. 

He appeared near one end of a bridge of shimmering colours, with a spectacular view of a gleaming, golden city. Steve had heard Asgard described but he'd never seen it, and he took a moment to admire the view, committing it to memory because he would need to paint this later, even though he was sure he would never capture the way the light gleamed on the spires, of the shifting glow of the bridge. 

"I didn't see you arrive," a voice said from behind him. "That is very unusual for me." 

Steve turned to see a tall figure with a golden sword. 

"You must be Heimdall. I've heard a lot about you. I'm just making a delivery." He raised the hammer in indication, a gesture that would hopefully also ensure that Heimdall wouldn't stab him with the sword. 

Heimdall gave a little nod and Steve set the hammer down, preparing to activate his suit for the next time jump. 

"If you could put it down at the edge of the bridge it would be appreciated," Heimdall said, "otherwise it might cause an obstruction." 

"Are you saying you couldn't simply pick it up and move it yourself?" Steve asked. 

Heimdall said nothing, neither to confirm nor deny Steve's suspicion, but there was a faint trace of a smirk on his face. Steve picked up the hammer and moved it to one side anyway, because he'd been asked and it was only polite. 

"Good luck, Captain," Heimdall said. 

"Thanks. You too. I'm sure you need a lot of luck dealing with Thor and his brother." 

Heimdall gave another, knowing smirk. Steve reached for his suit's controls. 

\---

Steve materialised in New York, a little way from the recent battle. There was the smell of smoke in the air and he could hear sirens somewhere nearby. A door opened into a large, old building that took up a large percentage of a block. A man in robes stood there. Steve had to pick his brain for the man's name, but he'd been one of the people Strange had talked to after the battle, and one who had asked to be present at the funeral for Tony. 

"You're expected," the man said. 

"Thank you, Wong," Steve replied. He thought there was a trace of surprise on the man's face, but the woman waiting for him inside showed no surprise at all. She matched the description from both Bruce and Strange, and she wore the amulet around her neck. She did look a little impressed as she saw the inside of the case with the remaining stones still in place. 

"You have succeeded against very long odds, Captain," she said. "That is to your credit, though I realise it may be little comfort in the face of your grief." 

At a gesture from her, the green time stone rose from the case and floated over to her necklace. Another gesture and it was sealed safely inside, protected from outside threats. 

She asked him to sit and offered him tea. 

"I shouldn't," he said. "I still have work to do and I need to hurry." 

She seemed almost amused by that. "That is hardly a concern here. We can talk as long as we need and you will find mere seconds have passed when you leave." 

"That's a very convenient skill." 

"It has its uses. Time can be stretched when we need it to be, without anything so crude as that suit you wear." 

"I'm sure Tony would have been heartbroken to hear his greatest technological achievement dismissed as crude." 

"It is effective for someone with no experience of the mystic arts," she acknowledged, "but it has its limitations. By travelling back here, you have changed events and created a new timeline. The longer you remain, the further you get from your original timeline. A few minutes and your suit can adapt, a few hours and you will still be within what your technology can safely accommodate, but a few days? At that point, the targeting might be lost, scattering you across realities or stranding you in one other than the one you intended." 

Steve swallowed. He hadn't thought of different realities. When he'd talked to Bucky about coming home the long way round, he hadn't thought that he might end up in a different timeline. He couldn't do it then, not if it meant leaving his Bucky alone, but still he didn't like the idea of leaving the past without seeing things through. 

"I can't stay in the past." It wasn't the end of the world, but he would still have long enough to talk to Peggy and Howard, to set changes in motion that would hopefully improve things for the world and for the people he cared most about. He would have to content himself with that, and maybe in this world Howard would be the one to find him in the ice. 

"Not unless you choose to stay forever." But then she gave a little smile, "Or unless you have help." She held a hand out towards him. "May I?" 

Steve wasn't entirely sure what he was agreeing to, but he nodded. With a twisting motion of her hand, she made a golden light appear around Steve's wrist and hand, where Tony's GPS was installed. The golden light flowed towards her like liquid, solidifying, forming into a little disk that gleamed like polished metal. It hovered in the air above her hand until she reached out and took hold of it, offering it out to Steve. 

He took it, half expecting the thing to crumble to dust in his hand or turn out to be nothing but an illusion, but it remained there, solid and stable in the palm of his hand, a little warm to the touch but not otherwise indicating it was anything but a circle of metal. 

"When you are ready to go home, bring that to me," the sorceress said, "or to Stephen Strange. In whatever timeline you end up in, one of us will be able to use that and the time stone to send you where you are trying to get, or near enough." 

"Near enough?" That seemed less than encouraging, but the sorceress smiled. 

"Within a few days and a few miles of where you started from, but definitely within your timeline." 

"Thank you." 

She nodded. "Thank you for fulfilling your side of the bargain and bringing the time stone home." 

Steve tucked the disk safely away, heart soaring with the possibilities. He could stay in the past as long as he needed and see to it that he did all he needed to do, and then he would still be able to get back home to Bucky. He wasn't having to choose between helping two different versions of Bucky. He could help both of them. 

With a grin on his face, he set off at a jog for Stark Tower, only occasionally having to dodge SHIELD operatives who were out and about helping the clear-up efforts. He didn't bother to hide from other authorities and the police officers, rescue workers, and fire fighters who saw him gave him cheerful waves or called out thanks. One team did call him over to help lift some rubble off a group trapped under a damaged building, but the assistance didn't slow him down too much, and he couldn't exactly say no when there was a child trapped under a metal girder. 

He cleared away enough rubble to let the non-enhanced people get in and clear the rest, and he still made it to the Tower in decent time. 

He snuck in through the parking entrance and hurried into the building, hoping to get close enough to the team before someone raised the alarm. He saw a couple of people in SHIELD uniform in the stairway as he made his way up, and he hoped they would let him go without question, but it seemed that his other self had raised the alarm about the potential that Loki was walking around in disguise. 

They let him pass, but when he reached the lobby, he was met with a shield flying at his face. 

“I’m still not Loki!” 

He dodged the punch his other self threw in his direction, twisting away and making a grab for the fallen shield, but his other self wasn’t the only one here waiting for him. The whole team was ready to fight. A blast from Tony’s suit nearly took his head off and he had to abandon the shield, dropping to the ground and rolling away. 

He did the only thing he could think of to prove that he was definitely not Loki. He reached out one hand and called for Mjolnir. 

Thor was too surprised to stop it as the hammer leapt from his hand and flew across the lobby. Steve snatched it out of the air.He was glad to have a weapon in hand as Tony fired another repulsor blast in his direction. He brought the hammer up and let it absorb the energy and then sent a burst of lightning to explode an arrow in midair before it went through his eye. 

“Stop!” Thor called, stepping forward and blocking Tony from firing again, holding a hand out towards Clint. "He's not Loki." 

There was a frozen moment when everyone was still staring at Steve with various weapons aimed at him. 

"How can you be sure?" It was Natasha who asked, her gun aimed at the middle of Steve's forehead. Steve really hoped he wasn't about to have to try blocking a bullet with lightning. 

"Only someone who is worthy can wield Mjolnir," Thor said. "Loki cannot do it." 

"Seriously?" Tony asked. "You're going to decide to trust him because he stole your hammer." 

Moving slowly, not wanting to set off another round of attacks, Steve lowered Mjolnir to the ground and then stepped back. He gestured to the hammer. 

"If you think you can pick it up, see for yourself." Steve hadn't had a chance to see whether the Tony from his time, after all he'd been through and all he'd learned, had become capable of wielding the hammer, but he thought it was very possible. He was struck with a rush of sorrow that he would never find out for sure. This Tony, still playing the hero for glory at least to a small degree, who hadn't learned to open up to others the way he needed to, wasn't there yet. 

"Try," Thor said. He was looking at Steve with curiosity. Most were still aiming weapons. The younger Steve had retrieved the shield and had it on his arm again. 

Tony moved towards the hammer and Steve took another couple of steps back, giving him room. Tony's metal fist closed around the handle and he tugged. Mjolnir didn't move. Steve let Tony try for a few moments more before saying, "In my timeline, you and Rhodey together couldn't move it, even with both of you using your suits." 

Tony looked up at him. Even with the Iron Man mask over his face, Steve could picture the expression on Tony's face. "What do you mean, your timeline?" 

"You figured out time travel. You, Bruce, and Scott." 

"Who?" 

"Ant Man. He's probably still in prison right now, but he's a good guy. He'll be an asset to the team." 

"Time travel?" Tony said. "That's the explanation you're going for with this?" 

"It's all very complicated, but yes. We needed to use the mind stone for something important and we couldn't get it in our time." 

"The mind stone?" Thor asked. "You're referring to one of the infinity stones?" 

"It was powering Loki's staff. That's how he was able to control Clint and others. It was also how Thanos was controlling Loki. Remember when we were in the lab with the staff and we all got irrationally angry? That was because of the mind stone. Thanos used it to increase Loki's feelings of anger and resentment." 

"Are you saying that Loki wasn't responsible for his actions?" Thor sounded almost hopeful about that. 

"He wasn't being controlled to the same extent that Clint was, but he was still being manipulated, so you should factor that into your judgements on him." 

"What's a mind stone?" Clint asked. He'd been quiet for most of this conversation but he was clearly frustrated now, probably not helped by the fact Steve was talking about him like he wasn't there. 

"The mind stone," Thor said, "is one of six infinity stones, objects of immense power that shape the natural forces of the universe. The stone would explain why Loki had powers he has never demonstrated before. And why he acted with such a desire to subjugate. My brother has always been one for mischief, and his bitterness has driven him to acts of violence, but his actions here are beyond any in his normal behaviour." 

He definitely seemed relieved about the fact that Loki hadn't been entirely himself. The others looked less certain, but hopefully they would be alright with this, especially given that Loki had escaped at some point while Tony had been trying to get the space stone. At least they could be reasonably confident that Loki wouldn't just turn around and try to invade Earth again. 

Steve said to Thor, "You should try to reach out to him again once the mind stone's effects have worn off. You're going to need him to help you deal with Hel." 

"Who is Hel?" 

"Ask your father, and ask him soon so you have more time to prepare in this timeline than you had in mine." 

Thor hadn't given him a letter for this version of himself, but Steve knew enough about what Thor had been to that he felt confident offering this advice. 

His other self wasn't interested as much in Loki as in other things. He asked, "What you said to me before, was that just to distract me?" 

"No. It was the truth. He's alive." He wondered if the expression he was looking at was the same expression that had been on his face when he'd torn the mask off Bucky's face in the middle of a fight. It was a look of shock and confusion, and of a hope that was so strong it almost became fear, because the thing being hoped for was too impossible to be happening. Or maybe Steve was just projecting somewhat. 

Steve reached into a pouch and pulled out a USB drive, offering it to his younger self. "This contains all the information we have on him from my timeline, where he's being held, who's holding him, what was done to him, even some confidential medical files from his treatment afterwards." He could have left it at that, but he knew that the thing Tony had resented the most and the thing that he'd stayed angry about the longest was the fact that Steve had hidden the truth about Howard's death from him. He wasn't going to make the same mistake twice. Tony deserved the truth. "There's some stuff on there Tony should see too, but read the files on the chair and the conditioning before you read the mission report files. It will make more sense that way round." And hopefully it would make Tony more understanding of the fact that Bucky hadn't been in control of himself at the time and so shouldn't be blamed for what had happened to Howard and his wife. 

The younger Steve took the USB drive from him, staring at it like it might be the holy grail. Steve looked himself in the eye. 

"He's gone through a hell of a lot, but he will remember you. He will get better. Just be there for him." 

Once again, Steve thought of Bucky in his own time, saying that he'd miss him. Steve had the golden disk from the sorceress. He could get back to him whenever he was done here so Bucky would never have the chance to miss him. He would be back with him again, and there was nothing for him to be concerned about, but in this timeline, maybe Bucky would be free a couple of years earlier. It wasn't much, compared to all he'd been through, but it wasn't nothing. 

Steve opened the case to reveal the two remaining infinity stones. He let them take the mind stone and put it in a containment unit, while Thor looked in wonder at the case with its empty spaces and the space stone still glowing in its protective padding. 

"You had all six of them?" Thor asked. 

"Briefly, but it was too dangerous to keep them all together, which is why I'm here, bringing them back." 

"But you used them?" 

"Not me personally. Tony used them, and Bruce did, or rather the Hulk and Bruce together." He looked towards the Hulk now. "There's a message on the drive for you from your future self which should help you figure that out a bit quicker." He looked around at the others, "We put quite a lot of information that we thought might help you all out on there, maybe stop you making the same mistakes we did. There's a lot on there about Thanos so you can be prepared and stop him before he becomes too big of a threat, and also some files on how not to build an army of robots that try to destroy the world." He looked pointedly at Tony at the end of that statement. 

Tony raised his hands. "I've done nothing." 

"Not yet," Steve said, "and hopefully you won't now. Look, in my time, we did a lot of good as the Avengers, but we also screwed up a few times alone the way, and there were times when we did what we could with the information we had, but we didn't get it quickly enough to stop a lot of damage being done by others, and even the damage we did stop, some of it came pretty close. Just by coming here to take the stones, we've changed things, so don't expect the things in the reports to happen as we've reported them, but the information should give you a heads up about the important things. We wanted to give you a better chance than we had, so we've included a lot of SHIELD files that could be useful." 

Like the names of every SHIELD agent who was secretly HYDRA. He didn't feel like explaining that right now or he would be here all day. 

"Thank you," his younger self said. 

Steve nodded. "Good luck, to all of you." Especially with Bucky, he didn't add. He hoped that things were easier for this Bucky in this timeline. If this Steve could get him out sooner, and use the information from the treatments he'd been given in Wakanda, it might save Bucky a few years of suffering at least, and doing things this way might prevent the mess with the accords and make it easier for Bucky to re-enter the world as a free citizen. 

The Bucky of this timeline might not be his Bucky, be he was still someone Steve cared a great deal about helping. 

Steve left the team of gathered Avengers and entered in the coordinates for his next and final stop.


End file.
